SOURCE: Shaviro, Steven. “Two Lessons from Burroughs.” In Posthuman Bodies, edited by Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, pp. 38-54. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Shaviro explores Burroughs's place in the “landscape of postmodern biology.”

Seattle, 1993. Don't believe the hype. I find myself stranded in this obsessively health-minded, puritanical, routinized, and relentlessly cheerful city, lifelines cut, lost without my vital supply of counteracting stimulants. Yes, some of the bands are still great, despite the insidious pressures of fame: Nirvana, Mudhoney, Seven-Year Bitch. But otherwise, nothing. I strain to hear the echo of Burroughs's silent scream: “What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: the word.” But does anyone even remember? These prefabricated combinations of words, and these carefully crafted, HWP bodies, are all I can find, perhaps all there is. Organicism is a myth. Our bodies are never ourselves, our...